TASCHEN

• Sold as a set of 5.
• Books are hardcover with thread-sewn binding.
• Two volumes in a clamshell box with foldouts, 554 pages total.
• Three prints on Canson Baryta paper, each numbered and signed by David LaChapelle.
• Double-coated matte paper.

From the beatific to the irreverent, the photography of David LaChapelle has never failed to provoke through its surreal homage to art history, celebrities and fashion. 

Born in Connecticut, LaChapelle enrolled at North Carolina School of the Arts, where he experimented with painting film negatives to bring out the colors’ intensity. After a showcase at NYC’s Gallery 303, he was hired as a photographer by Andy Warhol for Interview. This entry into the fashion world led to doing covers for GQ, Rolling Stone, Vanity Fair and Vogue. Pushing the boundaries of social commentary, his subversive shot of two sailors kissing for Diesel in 1995 made waves as the first homosexual kiss in an advertisement when “don’t ask, don’t tell” was mandated in the U.S. armed forces. 

Influenced by the likes of Caravaggio, Andy Warhol and Salvador Dalí, LaChapelle frequently stages imaginative tableaus with celebrities and models as religious stand-ins, merging his themes of paradise and materialism. His work is both luminescent and deliberately garish with well-known faces like Kim Kardashian and Madonna. As one of the most published photographers in the world, LaChapelle’s solo exhibits have ranged from LACMA to the National Portrait Gallery in D.C. and the Musée d’Orsay.